By
RICHARD A. FINEBERG
February 1, 2010
(Posted
Feb. 2, 2010) When
Santa answers letters from North Pole, Alaska, millions of kids picture gingerbread
homes lit by cheery candles in bright windows beneath snowy roofs where reindeer
might land. What they do not picture is tanks and towers of the Flint Hills oil
refinery, looming garish on the edge of town. Located on the banks of the Tanana
River, the refinery is silhouetted in the long winter night against harsh, glaring
light and a maze of piping. Many of this town's several thousand souls live within
a mile of this facility, which processes Alaska North Slope crude oil from the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS).
Just prior to the recent Christmas
season, a new Alaskan image appeared in the Lower-48 states. On a big, blue bus
custom-fitted for the multi-state Sarah Palin's multi-state book tour, her smiling
face looks out - next to an oversized autograph, superimposed against mountains
and evergreens toward the back of the bus and the legend "Going Rogue
. . . Book Tour" toward the front. (1) Add the big blue bus
- a modern day version of the old covered wagon - to the seemingly inexhaustible
list of Alaska images. Missing from this picture is the private jet that flew
Palin from city to city while her road crew drove the bus to the next stop. There,
Palin would climb aboard at the airport for the short ride to her venue, where
she would step down on cue to greet throngs and sign books for her admirers. According
to press accounts, after signing hundreds of books in a couple of hours, she might
invite carefully selected, friendly reporters for a rolling interview before departing
by bus for a short ride back to the plane. (2) While
Palin was barnstorming in the Lower-48, back in Alaska reality was colliding with
her oft-repeated claims that, as governor, she "promised to protect the environment
- and we did," and that Alaska demonstrates that "it is possible to
be both pro-environment and pro-resource development." (3)
But during the six weeks between the Nov. 17 release of Palin's book and the end
of the year, a somber, petroleum-stained picture of Alaska was emerging. Largely
overlooked by the headlines and celebrity gossip that swirled around the former
governor, the Alaska North Slope petroleum system spawned, in rapid succession,
no less than five separate spills.
Although
none of these events were environmental disasters, they etched two clear message
in stark relief against Alaska's icy winter background: Each spill is a reminder
of the potential for human failure to foil the best laid plans of petroleum system
operators and government oversight personnel who are charged with responsibility
to protect the public interest. While confirming this reality, the spills also
spotlight the potential consequences of Palin's failure, during her 32-month tenure
as governor, to put Alaska's petroleum system on a safe, positive course. Five
Oil Spills and a Book Tour
Less
than a week after Palin's book tour began, synchronicity began to fuse the conflicting
images from North Pole and the former governor's safari. On Nov. 23, Palin was
signing books at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina and Birmingham, Alabama. Meanwhile,
back in Alaska, at the Flint Hills refinery in North Pole workers discovered a
spill of approximately 3,000 gallons of oily water leaking into the gravel bed
along the railroad spur loading facility. The overhead 6" pipeline was immediately
shut down and a 16-person spill response team, laboring at temperatures near zero,
deployed boom to stop the spread of the product, then used vacuum trucks to recover
the oily water from the gravel pad. Refinery officials estimated that the spilled
mixture contained only one percent oil. Even that amount could have filled the
crankcase of about 25 automobiles. From a site photograph, it appears that the
spill area, running along the refinery railroad track, was more than a football
field long. (4) That
evening, as Palin was flying to Florida for appearances at three carefully chosen
conservative-voting communities the next day, approximately 80 adults gathered
glumly at the North Pole High School auditorium to learn about a more serious
refinery problem. State officials were going to tell them what they knew - and
didn't know - about a potentially hazardous refinery chemical, apparently released
into North Pole's water table by a refinery spill decades before but only recently
discovered seeping into some North Pole household water systems. During
its lifetime the North Pole refinery has experienced numerous spills, including
what the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) describes as "very
large but unknown amounts of petroleum" that leaked from storage tanks in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. After several decades of spills and cleanups ordered
by state and federal monitors, in 2002 an industrial chemical known as sulfolane
(tetrahydrothiophene 1, 1-dioxide) was identified as a North Pole ground water
contaminant. Sulfolane is a man-made industrial solvent, commonly used in refining
gasoline, among other manufacturing processes. While sulfolane causes neurological
disorders in laboratory animals exposed to high dosage, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency has never determined a safe drinking water level. Sulfolane
gets by on a pass because laboratory animals excrete low levels of the compound
before it can do harm. In 2006, ADEC approved a new corrective action plan for
Flint Hills, the refinery's third owner. The plan set the acceptable groundwater
cleanup level target for sulfolane at 350 parts per billion - nearly two orders
of magnitude higher than the allowable level for dangerous carcinogens like benzene.
ADEC said it derived this figure from standard analytical review of a study done
in British Columbia. At that time, it was assumed that North Pole ground water
was not carrying the potentially poisonous compound beyond the confines of the
refinery toward nearby homes.
In
October 2009 Flint Hills discovered that sulfolane had been identified in groundwater
beyond the refinery perimeter. Samples of drinking water in nearby homes contained
traces of the industrial chemical in well water in some. Small quantities of sulfolane
were also discovered in the city water system's wells. Not to worry: the well
was shut off. At that point, the state environmental agency called in public health
colleagues, who asked the federal government to come up with a safe drinking water
level that would protect the refinery's neighbors. By Nov. 23, Flint Hills was
providing approximately half a dozen homes with bottled and was expanding its
testing of household wells and groundwater.
Some
people at the North Pole High School auditorium on the evening of Nov. 23 wondered
why the government monitors had assumed that ground water was not following the
path of the nearby Tanana River. No answer. Nor was it clear why ADEC set the
sulfolane level so high back in 2006 instead of bringing in public health specialists
in a more timely manner to determine the human health hazard posed by sulfolane,.
"What are we, guinea pigs?" one nervous North Pole resident asked. Since
that night, traces of sulfolane have been found in 57 private wells and ground
water as far as 2-1/2 miles from the refinery. Flint Hills is now supplying bottled
water to approximately 55 nearby homes while state officials wait for federal
specialists to provide a safe drinking water guideline for the toxic chemical.
It was only after
the public meeting that word reached State of Alaska of a sulfolane contamination
episode several decades ago near Stockton, California that reportedly led California
to set an acceptable sulfolane level for drinking water of 57 parts per billion.
Differences between this target level and the much higher level ADEC adopted from
the Canadian study in 2006 have not been analyzed because the state was unaware
of and has not been able to obtain the records on the earlier California study.
Although residents are understandably worried about the health risks posed by
sulfolane in their drinking water (as well as the possible effects on their property
values) at this time North Pole's sulfolane problem seems to be a more akin to
a worrisome headache than to a health crisis. Nevertheless, this episode raises
serious doubts about the vigor and the effectiveness of Alaska's oversight of
its golden petroleum goose. (5)
North
Pole's Nov. 23 double-header marked the start of a strange rash of Alaska spills.
Six days later, as Palin was heading for Richland, Washington to resume her tour
after a Thanksgiving week-end break, a new spill was reported at the sprawling
Prudhoe Bay complex on the edge of the continent, 450 miles to the north of North
Pole. An 18-inch pipeline froze and split, releasing an a mixture of water, oil
and natural gas estimated at 46,000 gallons that spewed out under pressure, spreading
a petroleum mist that covered approximately half an acre at the Lisburne oil field,
a Prudhoe Bay satellite operated by international oil giant British Petroleum
(BP). (6) Once
again, state oversight officials were caught flat-footed - in part because the
state does not station full-time environmental monitors at the nation's largest
oil field. "Why do lines on the North Slope have temperature probes if BP
isn't going to check them?" a state official wondered in retrospect. Without
full-time oversight personnel on the ground at the aging Prudhoe Bay petroleum
complex, he said he was unable to hazard a guess how BP had come to miss the ice
plugs in the line that are believed to have caused a two-foot-long gash in the
field pipeline that was carrying the mixture to the Lisburne processing facility
for separation.
BP's
apparent North Slope operational lapse was nothing new. The international oil
giant was already on criminal probation for lax management practices at Prudhoe
Bay, having pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge and paid $20 million
in fines and restitution for corrosion problems in 2006 that caused the largest
spill in North Slope history. Documents revealed that BP's penchant for cost-cutting
was probably the root cause of the oil company's failure to deal effectively with
that well-known nemesis of aging oil fields - corrosion. ADEC, which had allowed
technical reports to be altered to support BP's claims it was taking appropriate
anti-corrosion actions in 2001, was either incredibly naïve or a witting
accomplice. In hearings Washington, DC, in September 2006, stalwart industry advocates
in both the U.S. House and the Senate excoriated BP. "BP's policies are as
rusty as its pipelines. I am very concerned," declared Rep. Joe Barton (Rep.,
Texas), Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. "Shame,
shame, shame." BP and chastened state officials dutifully declared that they
would improve maintenance procedures at the nation's largest oil field. (7)
Continued
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Alaska:
Under a Rogue Star
(Continued)
On
Dec. 2, three days after the Lisburne spill, Palin arrived in Springfield, Missouri,
fresh from Roswell, New Mexico. She boarded the big blue to head for the Borders
bookstore, where she stepped off to greet her fans, some of whom had camped out
all night in freezing weather to see her. She spent three hours autographing books
at the largest signing the store owner could remember, then left to give a lecture
at a nearby university. That
afternoon Alaska's North Slope suffered yet another spill at a well housing in
the Prudhoe field itself, about ten miles west of the site of the much larger
Lisburne spill. BP estimates that approximately 7,140 gallons of produced water
was released inside a manifold building, with 5,040 gallons (120 barrels) flooding
the building and 2,100 gallons (50 barrels) spilling onto the gravel pad outside.
(8)
The
latest oil discharge was not discussed at an Alaska community meeting that was
focused other petroleum development issues. Kevin Hostler, the President of the
Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the TAPS operator, was in Fairbanks to drum
up community support for the pipeline company's latest drive to cut costs on behalf
of its owners. (North Slope producers BP, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil own 95%
of Alyeska.) For the coming year, Alyeska planned to save $100 million by not
filling approximately 60 positions left open by retirement and postponing the
completion of the pipeline's strategic reconfiguration (SR) program. SR is the
massive pipeline overhaul, now in its sixth year, that involves transition to
an automated pipeline with electric-powered pumps replacing the original jet engines.
Hostler was pitching that day for additional long-term savings Alyeska hoped to
realize by replacing approximately 300 veteran union workers from Fairbanks and
Valdez with younger, non-union workers based in Anchorage. "We're trying
to be as efficient and effective as we can," Hostler explained, in order
to meet the economic challenge posed by the increasing costs associated with declining
North Slope throughput. Alyeska
frequently tries to cut costs at the direction of its owners. To veteran pipeline
workers and former Alyeska employees, the company's latest plan raised serious
safety concerns; old hands worried that their lower-paid replacements would lack
both pipeline experience and familiarity with local conditions necessary to ensure
safe operations. To the few observers familiar with the billions of dollars TAPS
had siphoned from the state (and the few independent producers operating on the
North Slope) through excessive shipping charges, the necessity for cost-cutting
seemed sadly ironic. During Palin's first year in office, her administration had
promoted and enacted legislation that would have enabled state officials to correct
the long-standing pipeline revenue problem, but the provisions were never implemented.
On this day, however, the Fairbanks press and community were focused on jobs -
not safety, spill prevention or equitable revenue. In a community concerned about
the loss of high-paying oil industry jobs, Alyeska had stirred up a hornet's nest.
Local phones were buzzing as politicians, union leaders tried to figure out how
to respond to the complaints of pipeline workers. Spill issues were not addressed.
(9)
That
evening Palin, no longer burdened by current contretemps of the state she had
recently governed, was bound for Fayetteville, Arkansas. The next morning she
would step sprightly from the bus to start another round of book signing by greeting
folks who had camped out overnight to see her before she left for an engagement
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The following day would find Palin in the heart of
Texas. Two days later a long zig-zag between Ft. Hood and Sioux City, Iowa would
take Palin back to Fairfax, Virginia. Although Palin's recent peregrinations would
not have been possible if she had chosen to fulfill her responsibilities as governor,
she had resigned and was now free as a bird. There
is nothing inherently wrong with flying to engagements on a book-signing tour.
Author Joe McGinniss, who is following Palin closely, recalls that has done that
himself. But McGinniss contends that there is a big difference between Palin's
travel arrangements and his. Not the renting of a private jet, which McGinniss
could not afford on his tours. The critical distinction is that McGinniss never
tried to pretend he was on a bus. "What's wrong in this instance," he
writes, "is the apparent fakery created and sustained for the sake of building
pseudo-populist appeal-and selling books."
Palin's
book tour ended in mid-December, but there seemed to be no end to the Alaska spills.
On December 21, a six-inch pipe just outside a well house building at Prudhoe
broke apart. The force of the spill put a small hole in the back of the building,
blew the doors open at the front and released a mist of oil, water and natural
gas that covered an area nearly the size of a football field. BP estimated that
the mist may have contained as much as 700 gallons of the oily mixture, including
about 100 gallons of oil, plus about 135 gallons of corrosion inhibitor. (10) Two
days after the fourth spill in a month on Alaska's North Slope delivery system,
ADEC issued an $8-million request for consulting services, specifying that the
applicants should provide the department with a range of engineers and safety
specialists. (11) "That's expertise," comments Lois Epstein,
an environmental engineering consultant, "that the state responsible for
the largest oil field in the nation should have had on the staff decades ago."
On December 23
- the day that ADEC issued its RFP for assistance - a tug from the Valdez tanker
escort fleet, on a routine ice patrol mission, somehow ran into the infamous Bligh
Reef in Prince William Sound, approximately 850 miles south of Prudhoe Bay. In
1989, the underwater spires of the same reef had impaled the tanker Exxon Valdez,
resulting in the worst oil spill this nation ever experienced. The estimated 7,000
gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the sound December 23 amounts to less than
one-tenth of one percent of the crude oil the Exxon Valdez is known to have dumped
into the clear waters of this wildly beautiful fishery 20 years earlier. Nobody
could explain how this craft managed to hit what must be considered one of the
best known, best marked and most closely watched navigation hazards in the nation.
The day after
the grounding in Prince William Sound, Governor Sean Parnell, Palin's replacement,
issued a press release indignantly deploring the outbreak of spills. Asked about
the spills on a statewide radio talk show Jan. 5, he fumed, "I think that's
crazy; that's too much." Borrowing from the scripts of past political leaders
and contrite oil industry officials, the new Alaska governor said he had asked
his commissioners to make sure the state's level of inspections is adequate, adding
that he had called BP and that company officials had assured him they were doing
everything possible to stop this outbreak of spills. (12)
In
January, as the former governor moved on to become a Fox news commentator, the
Alyeska jobs issue was resolved when Alyeska agreed to preserve union positions
in exchange for pay cuts. Meanwhile, the Lisburne transit line that had frozen
and burst back in November sprung another small leak - a reminder that the environmental
effects of cost-cutting on Alaska petroleum operations have not been addressed.
(13) The cumulative effects of spills from petroleum operations
and the possibility that a major operating error could have serious environmental
consequences worry veteran observes. "The point is," declares former
ADEC monitor Dan Lawn, "they shouldn't be having spills like that. BP is
on probation and they promised to fix their maintenance procedures." Lawn
ought to know: Based in Valdez in the years before the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill,
he tried to warn superiors of the undue risk posed by shortcomings in the TAPS
terminal and tanker systems. What
Palin Says, And What (If Anything) She Actually Did
The
Alaska spill sequence that unfolded during the final weeks of 2009 suggests that
Palin's claims to be a protector of the environment are phony. Consider, for example,
this passage from Going Rogue: Prior
to the election it had been revealed that BP had been trying to save money for
years by cutting corners on oil pipeline maintenance on the North Slope. This
was very serious: leaks and spills from corroded pipelines were all too common
and harmed the environment plus led to production slowdowns. So one of my first
priorities was to establish the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office (PSIO). With
the creation of the PSIO, Alaska became the first state to require industry operators
to document their compliance with maintenance and quality assurance standards,
and to share that information with the state. Unfortunately, the next year the
House Finance subcommittee gutted more than a third of the PSIO budget. I fought
to get it restored and finally succeeded. (14)
The
preceding excerpt -- one of Palin's few curtsies to environmental considerations
in her autobiography -- is a mixture of fact, wishful thinking and empty rhetoric.
Demonstrating her characteristic failure to follow through, Palin abruptly ended
this snippet without telling readers what - if anything - the new agency accomplished
during its two years under her tenure. The Alaska spill sequence that silently
shadowed her Lower-48 book tour in late 2009 clearly suggest that the oversight
procedures Palin claims to have established to insure safe production and transport
of Alaska petroleum were either not in place or not working as intended.
Review of state documents reveals further evidence that Palin's new unit has
not been able to fulfill the tasks or deal with the problems that Palin outlined
in the passage above. According to the executive order establishing the PSIO in
April 2007, the new agency's first major assignments were to conduct a gap analysis
to identify redundancies and holes in the government monitoring process, and to
"evaluate industry oversight of . . . facilities, equipment, infrastructure,
and activities." When Palin left office two years later, the gap analysis
had yet to be completed and there was no sign of a PSIO evaluation of industry
management oversight programs. (15)
Palin
also cited the establishment of the PSIO as proof that Alaskan petroleum development
was environmentally friendly in her farewell speech as governor in Fairbanks in
July 2009, and in the October 2009 article quoted above that urged aggressive
oil drilling in Alaska in October 2009. Both references area shorter than the
passage quoted above; neither provided any information to support Palin's oft-repeated
brag.
In Going
Rogue, Palin neglected to tell readers about the failure of another closely
related project she initiated, the Alaska oil and gas infrastructure risk assessment.
When Palin announced that project on May 1, 2007, two weeks after establishing
the PSIO, she proclaimed:
For
our new Petroleum Systems Integrity Office (PSIO) to do an effective job, it must
have access to comprehensive, thorough, and objective assessment data to tell
us the status of the infrastructure and what it should be. No such system-wide
risk assessment has ever been conducted of this complex system. (16)
Although
the environmental community spearheaded public criticism of the project, negative
comments also came from other quarters. A strong critic of the ADEC plan was a
former Alyeska spill prevention and response manager. To its credit, ADEC sought
an independent, professional evaluation of its proposed project. A peer review
panel appointed by the National Research Council's Transportation Review Board
(TRB) undertook this task, concluded that ADEC's risk assessment plan simply would
not work and recommended that the state start over. The panel's report was issued
in October 2009, one month before Palin would begin her barnstorming tour. She
would be silently accompanied by exactly the kind of spills the risk assessment
devised under her administration would have overlooked altogether. (17) Conclusion The
strange rash of oil Alaska oil spills that quietly accompanied Sarah Palin's book
tour during the last six weeks of 2009 calls attention to the failure of the Alaska
oil industry and the state oversight system to live up to their oft-repeated promises
that they can develop Alaska petroleum resources safely. How could a tug on a
routine patrol in Prince William Sound hit the same rocks that ripped holes in
the tanks of the Exxon Valdez 20 years ago to unleash the worst spill in this
nation's history? In the interior Alaska town of North Pole, 400 miles to the
north, with groundwater providing drinking water for folks in close proximity
to a refinery that experienced large oil spills more than two decades ago that
released unidentified contaminants, why was the state caught flatfooted when drinking
water samples recently began to show traces of a potentially toxic chemical compound
the refinery has used? Another 400 miles north, on the continent's Arctic edge,
how did the nation's largest oil fields suffer three unexplained spills in just
four weeks in late 2009 under the management of BP, already on criminal probation
after drawing a $20-million fine for performance failures in 2006 at Prudhoe Bay?
These questions
about the recent rash of spills call for a closer look at the troubled state monitoring
system, and more questions emerge: Why doesn't the state's main environmental
unit station full-time monitors at the sprawling Prudhoe Bay complex at the northern
edge of the continent? Why did the two programs that Palin proudly established
as governor in response to BP's embarrassing North Slope performance failure in
2006 - programs that were supposed to identify the gaps in the state-federal regulatory
system and the risks associated with petroleum operations - both fail to produce
substantive results during her two-and-a-half years as governor? What role did
these oversight failures play in the recent rash of spills that sullied Palin's
brag that she has delivered environmentally responsible development? Despite the
increasing risks associated with an aging oil production and delivery complex,
has complacency set in once again to increase the chances of another major environmental
disaster in Alaska?
Largely
unnoticed by the throngs that gathered to greet Palin on her book tour, the series
of spills in Alaska during the last six weeks of 2009 undermined Palin's attempt
to portray herself as an effective environmental protector. These developments
converge with a review of her administrative record to illuminate significant
portions of the mess Palin left behind when she abandoned public office in mid-stream
and took her show on the road. Palin's misleading and superficial brags concerning
her environmental performance mask the reality Alaska revealed during her Lower-48
book tour: "Drill, Baby, Drill" really means "Spill, Baby, Spill."
Beyond the competence of a rogue politician, a close look at Alaska's recent environmental
record suggests that is there is little reason to believe the industry can safely
explore for oil and develop whatever deposits may be discovered in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and beneath the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of the Arctic
Ocean.
Endnotes
to "Rogue Star" 1.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's tour schedule was posted by Chris Cillizza,"The
Fix" (Political News & Analysis), Washington Post (on-line; accessed
Jan. 4, 2010 at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/republican-party/the-palin-book-tour.html.
(Photograph of the tour bus, as it appeared on-line at various locations on or
about Nov. 20, 2009.) 2.
Joe McGinniss, "Palin's Bus Hoax," The Daily Beast, Nov. 29,
2009 (on-line, accessed Jan. 4, 2010 at http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-29/palins-bus-hoax/full/. 3.
Palin's farewell speech as governor in Fairbanks, July 26, 2009 is the source
of the statement that she "promised to protect the environment, and we did;"
is from her speech on tresignation he day of her resignation in Fairbanks, July
26, 2009; the statement that "it is possible to be both pro-environment and
pro-resource development" is from "Drill: Petroleum is a major part
of America's energy picture. Shall we get it here or abroad?" National
Review, Nov. 2, 2009 (posted Oct. 16, 2009). 4.
See: Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention
and Response, Prevention and Emergency Response Program, "Flint Hills Refinery
Oily Water Line" (First and Final Situation Report, Spill No. 09309932701),
Nov. 24, 2009. (Some information on spills reported in this commentary has been
added from press reports and interviews with state officials and other informed
observers.) 5.
See: Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention
and Response, Contaminated Sites Program, "Flint Hills Resources Refinery,
North Pole Refinery," Jan. 27, 2010 (accessed Jan. 28, 2010 at http://www.dec.state.ak.us/spar/csp/sites/npolerefinery.htm);
and Amanda Bohman, "Contaminated North Pole water is unknown health threat,"
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Nov. 24, 2009, p. A1 and "North Pole water
gets the OK to drink - Sulfolane poses no health risks, officials say," Jan.
21, 2010, p. A1. 6.
See: Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention
and Response, Prevention and Emergency Response Program, "Lisburne Common
Release Line," Dec. 9, 2009 (Situation Report #11; spill number 09399933301).
7. See: Lisa
Demer, "BP spill may lead to 3rd criminal violation (PROBATION: Officials
not sure if pipeline split violates court terms)," Anchorage Daily News,
Dec. 19, 2009. For background on North Slope corrosion-related spills in 2006,
see author's reports in the archives of this web site (North Slope Spill [March
15, 2006], "The Shutdown" [Sept. 3, 2006] and "Update Report [May
15, 2007]). 8.
See: Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention
and Response, Prevention and Emergency Response Program, "R-Pad Produced
Water Leak," Dec. 3, 2009 (First and Final Situation Report, Spill No. 09399933601).
(The second sentence of the paragraph describing this spill was corrected Feb.
3, 2010. The phrase "spilling onto the gravel pad outside" replaced
the original wording, "escaping onto the frozen tundra.") For more on
Palin's Springfield, MO, autographing session, see: Scott Meeker, "Palin
supporters gather for Springfield book signing (extra: c/poetry written for Sarah
Palin)," The Joplin Globe, Dec. 3, 2009. 9.
See: Alan Bailey, "Trimming back: 60 jobs at alyeska to go in 2010 as pipeline
oil flow continues to decline; pump station 1 electrification delayed by one year,"
Petroleum News, Nov. 15, 2009, p. 4; Christopher Eschleman, "Alyeska
trims down: Firm shifts hundreds of jobs to non-union contractors to cut costs,"
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Dec. 3, 2009, p. A1. (For information on the
Palin administration pipeline tariff legislation and its demise, see: Richard
A. Fineberg, "Setting the Record Straight on Palin's Going Rogue: What Really
Happened during that 2007 Special Session - Former Governor Claims Credit for
ACES, But She Just Can't Seem to Tell It Like It Was," Dec. 20, 2009; for
links to this web site's past posts on other TAPS tariff issue, click here.) 10.
See: Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention
and Response, Prevention and Emergency Response Program, "Drill Site 6, Well
11, Mixed Product Spill," c. Dec. 22, 2009 (accessed at http://www.dec.state.ak.us/spar/perp/response/sum_fy10/091221301/091221301_index.htm);
and Dec. 3, 2009 (Situation Report No. 3, Spill No. 09399933501). 11.
Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention and Response,
"Engineering & Technical Assistance for Oil & Gas Facilities &
Related Infrastructure" (RFP No. 2010-1800-8808), Dec. 23, 2009 (n.b. Sec.
5, "Scope of Work"). 12.
See: Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation, Division of Spill Prevention
and Response, Prevention and Emergency Response Program, "Tug Pathfinder
Grounding," Jan. 4, 2010 (Situation Report #7 and Final, Spill No. 09229935701);
Office of the Governor, "Governor Indignant at Oil Spills (in Prince William
Sound, Prudhoe Bay)," Dec. 24, 2009 (Press Release No. 09-109); and "Talk
of Alaska: Governor Sean Parnell," Alaska Public Radio Network (accessedf
at http://feeds.aprn.org/aprn-toa). 13.
See: Christopher Eschleman, "Unions keep pipeline jobs: Workers agree to
pay cuts under the deal," Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Jan. 15, 2010,
p. A1; and Associated Press, "BP reports small spill in pipeline tbhat leaked
earlier," Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 29, 2010. 14.
Sarah Palin, Going Rogue: An American Life (Harper Collins, 2009), p. 153.
15. Office of
the Governor, State of Alaska, "ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER NO. 234," April
18, 2007 (n.b. par. 1, 2, 5 and 6); State of Alaska, "Department of Natural
Resources Petroleum Systems Integrity Office, Component Budget Summary,"
Dec. 15, 2008, pp. 2-3 (in State of Alaska, FY2010 Governor's Operating Budget);
and "Department of Natural Resources Petroleum Systems Integrity Office,
Component Budget Summary," Dec. 15, 2008, p. 2 (in State of Alaska, FY2011
Governor's Operating Budget). 16.
Office of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, "Assessment of Oil and Gas Infrastructure
(Governor Palin Calls for Comprehensive Assessment of Alaska's Oil and Gas Infrastructure),"
May 1, 2007 (Press Release No. 07-096). 17.
See: Alaska Wilderness League, et al., "Re: Recommendation to Terminate Alaska
Risk Assessment Contract," June 2, 2009 (letter to ADEC Commissioner Larry
Hartig signed by 13 organizations and two individuals; the author of this commentary
was also the principal drafter of the Alaska Wilderness League's environmental
community letter opposing the ARA's draft methodology); Transportation Research
Board of the National Academies, Technical Peer Review of a Proposed Risk Assessment
Methodology on Alaska's Oil and Gas Infrastructure (Letter Report), Oct. 15,
2009 (esp. pp. 33-35). (For commentary and background, see also the ADEC ARA web
site; for commentary, see the July-August 2009 and Nov. 11, 2009 posts on this
web site.)Senator Ted Stevens, "Senator Stevens Highlights Inconsistencies
in Anti-Drilling Stance," May 23, 2008 (press release).
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